


In Private

by Clair de Lune (clair_de_lune)



Category: Prison Break
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-18 15:01:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clair_de_lune/pseuds/Clair%20de%20Lune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You do not wash your dirty laundry in public: Lincoln taught him so and he never forgot it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Private

**Author's Note:**

> Writenn for Alohomoraa who wanted "Michael and dirty laundry".

You do not wash your dirty laundry in public: Lincoln taught him so and he never forgot it.

* * *

“Yuck,” Lincoln lets drop, wrinkling his nose with disgust as Mom removes the sheets from his bed and throws them in a ball in a corner of the room.

“He doesn’t realize what he does,” she says patiently.

“He realizes enough to come and piss on my bed instead of staying in his own!”

“You do no say p... You do not use that word, Lincoln,” she chastises automatically.

Michael is sitting at the foot of his bed, his arms snaked around his bent knees, his head hanging low, as Mom changes the sheets in Linc’s bed. Yet another unfortunate incident. Mom and the doctor say that he walks and does things while sleeping; Linc affirms that he does it on purpose. As for him, he thinks that p... or whatever... on Lincoln’s bed is already awkward enough, but he’s more scared of what else he could do – break something, hurt someone, go out in the street and lose his way...

Terrified by this thought, he stays still in the dark once Mom has left and the light has been turned off. In the end, Lincoln sighs and asks him, “Do you want to sleep with me?” as if he understands the issue. In a blink of an eye, Michael leaps out of his bed and sidles into Linc’s. “Just try to remember this is my bunk, not the toilets, will you?” Michael smiles in spite of himself and comfortably settles against his brother’s back.

The sheets smell like soap and Mom and Lincoln.

Lincoln teased him for years about his nocturne wanderings and their consequences. Michael was in college and he still heard about that – damn, they’re aboard the ship sailing to Panama and he still hears about that. But Linc never ever breathed a word about it to anyone, never made the slightest allusion in public, never slipped the slightest innuendo.

* * *

“Don’t forget to sort your laundry,” Lincoln warned him. If he didn’t obey right away, it was not out of bad will, he just forgot. He threw everything in the laundry basket, promising himself he would take care of that later, once he'd have finished this thing he was working on and, of course, the laundry basket got out of his mind. This kind of thing tends to happen: he’s so engrossed into a book, a model or watching the birds through the window that he forgets everything else.

It’s not the first time it happens. It usually ends with Lincoln grumbling and huffing and sorting the laundry.

This time around, however, it ends with Lincoln coming back from the laundry with a bag full of t-shirts and boxers that used to be white and are now pink after they’ve been “inadvertently” washed with Vee’s very red skirt.

Linc has not been cruel enough to put under the same treatment the white shirt Michael intends to wear tomorrow night, though.

* * *

He usually trusts the dry cleaner’s with all his laundry, from his suits to his sheets, shirts and sweaters. It’s way easier and quicker like that. He made sure that the man knows his job, and he gets his clothes back absolutely perfect, without a crease or a hanging button. He projects every day exactly the image he’s supposed to.

He gets his clothes back under a thin plastic wrap, smelling like chemicals. Wrapped up, artificial, impersonal.

When the washing machine of his flea-bitten building doesn’t work, Lincoln comes and washes his clothes at Michael’s. Not that he has a lot of things, Lincoln is not really the showy type as far as clothes are concerned. But for a few hours – or a few days if Lincoln disappears in the meantime – there is in the middle of Michael’s living room a small pile of jeans and t-shirts. He has quite ambivalent feelings about the said pile. Annoyance because it disrupts the perfection of his apartment and of his life. Nostalgia because it reminds him of a time when he slept in beds smelling familiar scents and had to wear pink socks. Sometimes, he irons Lincoln’s stuff, folds them and piles them up carefully, wishing he can put his brother’s life in order as easily.

* * *

The Fox River’s standard issued clothes they were wearing when they escaped have been left behind in Oswego’s graveyard, dirty, worn and sticky. Instead, he’s slipped on a suit looking like those he used to wear a few months ago, in another life. Linc is wearing civilian clothes for the first time in three years.

They’re not quite the same than they were in jail. For a few weeks, Linc obeyed, followed the plan with – almost – no discussion. Now that they’re out, however, the dynamic already tends to reverse, and Lincoln asks, insists, almost demands that they get LJ back. Yet, when Sucre, C-Note and Abruzzi come closer, Linc shuts up and waits.

You do not wash your dirty laundry in public.

-End-


End file.
